Unreality, goals, and possibly some denial

So, some days ago (I cannot be bothered to find out actual facts and figures here people), I spent a lovely afternoon folding tiny things. Mostly tiny clothes, though at the end I had aquired quite a sizable pile of tiny shoes. Not pairs of shoes--just one shoe per pair. It's like Beylit got involved somehow... I don't know.

As I sat there folding, I was amazed at just how tiny infant clothes are. It makes sense, as infants are tiny, even the big ones. I remember holding my niece when she was still HOURS old and thinking--how can she be so tiny and yet seem so big at the same time? There's a sort of unreality about babies that way. They seem so small and fragile and delicate and yet... that came out of another HUMAN. The ergonomics of how babies fit inside people is pretty much a mystery. I keep going back to Temerity Jane's organ purse post* to see where the heck this Freckle has gotten to, and being amazed. Seriously amazed. She's crossed the Great Navel Trench. That is sort of weird to me. I look at that diagram and think is it even possible? She's made it this far already, why not further? Because I'm still using that space for me!!

Also, while I know that the goal of this whole project is to have a baby at the end of it--an external, not taking up the space my innards are used to occupying baby--I still can't quite wrap my brain around it. Most of the time, I can wrap my brain around being pregnant. I am carrying a baby--on the inside. Right. Check. That explains the crazy "why are my intestines playing Twister with my liver?" sensations. And yet... there are still times when I... forget? Get surprised? I'll be minding my own business, wearing my own pants, feeling generally just like myself and then I'll see something crazy in my house--like a car seat or some tiny dress and my first thought is usually, "who am I giving that to?" because I can't really fathom that this is happening. I know I'm pregnant, and that means that eventually I'll have a baby. While I know that, I find the fact strangely easy to forget, despite the fact that I'm pretty much thinking about it a lot of times per day and worry that it's the only thing I'm talking about when I see my friends, because while there is other stuff going on in my life right now (work is slowly getting less slow, I'm hosting a belated Christmas celebration at my house where I have to COOK for my MOTHER and BROTHER, which is making me a little nutty), there are also like A MILLION pregnant ladies in my life right now, so it's... all around me.

Maybe because I've had such an easy time? Things have gone remarkably well for me, and I'm very aware of how awesome that is. Between friends who actually live within driving distance of me, MBFJC, book club ladies, and some of my Internet Ladies, the current total of Babies I know getting themselves born in 2012 is... a lot. 19? 20? Something like that. Someone is having twins, so that always throws my count off. Well, one less than that since one of those babies got born on Dec 26th, but it's close enough to 2012 that I'm just going to go ahead and count him in the menagerie. I'm sure he won't mind. His age can still be calculated in understandable amounts of hours, so, you know, he's pretty easy-going about things that aren't his current state of comfort. I assume. I haven't actually met him yet. I think this baby-boom has added to the surreal quality of it all.

There's also the strange fact of... how do you connect the internal baby to the external baby? I know there will be witnesses to assure me that the baby they hand me is the same one I've been poking and talking to, but... how does your brain even compute that? Not that pregnant women aren't AWARE that the baby comes out. We get it. But... I mean... it's weird. I saw all the picture of my friend going from stunningly slender to very, very pregnant and it still wasn't really real until I saw her in person. Even then, it was sort of strange. Hard to connect the fact that this belly sticking out of her was actually HER and there was a PERSON inside. A very tiny person. Well, not too tiny. 8lbs 5 oz on the day of the reveal, so, a baby-sized baby. Still. A person! Inside! And there's one inside me? I have a hard time with that concept, despite the fact that this is EXACTLY what I wanted and what I tried very hard to achieve.

I'm also in denial about my pants at the moment. I know if there is anything about which I have become a sad, bitter, broken record it is pants. I just can't bring myself to pay $70 (plus tax and shipping) for a pair of pants to wear for 3 months that I'd still have to have hemmed once they arrived. I know--me having to have pants hemmed is quite a novelty, but not one I'm interested in experiencing. At 6 months I'm finally starting to feel uncomfortable in my last 4 pairs of wearable pants. I've got Bella Bands. I've got hair-ties. I'm doing my best to extend the life of these pants for as long as possible, because... it's coldish here, and I don't want to wear skirts all the time just yet. Soon enough that will be my only option, and I will suck it up and soldier on. For now, I'm hanging on to my pants with every shred of willpwoer I posses.

I spend a lot of time with my friends who have kids just watching, trying to absorb it all. Seeing what things happen and how they deal with it. I look at the baby pictures my Internet Ladies post and think--someday I'll be posting picture of a baby, not 14,000 pictures of my cats. (Probably only 1000 pictures of my cats.) It just all still seems so far away and unreal. I have a drawer full of cloth diapers. That should make things a little realer, right? Nope. A drawer full of tiny 0-3 month clothes, another of 3-6? 2 baby baths, a car seat, a pack-n-play, a co-sleeper, changing pads, pop-up crib, bag full of toys? Nope. Just stuff. Baby stuff, but... anyone can have stuff. Connecting that stuff with the reality of a tiny person to put in that stuff, that's a little bit harder.

Still, the goal is baby. Full steam ahead! Furniture rearranging has already happened and shall continue until the disaster that is the Sunshine room begins to look like something vaguly nursery like. That's a goal too.


*Yes, I'm using TJ as my go-to for information. I haven't seen that diagram anywhere else, and it's less disturbing than the full-color animated-looking pictures from some of the baby sites.